Gil Hanse Olympic Golf Architect

When the Olympic committee selected Gil Hanse to design the 2016 Olympic golf course they chose reality over fantasy. Gil is a genuine dirt pusher with muddy shoes and his designs are based on field calls and common sense. Gil’s old website had a picture of him sitting in an excavator seat, with dusty eyebrows. This is the antithesis of the pretty boy golf architects who dominated past golf development.

The Olympic committee realized that Gil’s design methodology had much more substance than the pairing a PGA a pro (or two) together with a  cad guy who  knows how to print out a pretty rendering. It seems like the golf design world is leaning toward seat-of-the-pants field designers instead of golf professionals with limited actual design experience (not including the expertise and lingo  they poach from golf shapers). Even Donald Trump gets it, he just hired Gil to redo Doral’s Blue Monster.